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CPY people in central Australia practice subincision as a manhood ritual. In order to concieve they tie the penis together with their wives' hair. They only d
by Perenti 3y ago
CPY people in central Australia practice subincision as a manhood ritual. In order to concieve they tie the penis together with their wives' hair. They only did/do this in times of plenty though. Otherwise the subincision means semen just dribbles down the scrotum, and not into the wife. Seems they knew what went where.
The spirit of a new embryo came from a waterhole, with the help of the Rainbow Serpent. But they knew where babies came from.
Spitting/throwing seeds of fruit on the ground is a lot like planting them.
I know of no evidence that Indigenous Australians were so hungry that they were only sporadically fertile. Source?
- jojobas 3y agoFor one, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12337490/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12337490/. There's plenty of research on mythology of various tribes regarding the matter. Some had various suspicions and practices such as above, none had a consistent viewpoint of fatherhood, semen, conception etc comparable to that of people who observed domesticated animals.
- defrost 3y agoInteresting that you link to one of Gillian's papers, I met her in the 1980s. From the full paper of the link you gave, regarding traditional method of abortion in Southern Arnhem Land women: Voluntary controls are of course an important issue in any discussion of overall fertility. A detailed survey of the available information on contraception, abortion and infanticide among Aborigines has revealed that Aboriginal women saw children as a contingent good (Cowlishaw 1979). First there were widespread attempts at contraception by taking medicine, performing rituals and avoiding coitus. Which poses the question, why avoid coitus if there is (as you claim) no understanding of fatherhood and conception.
- Perenti 3y agoHmmm... only read the abstract, but the idea that indigenous australians _in general_ were starving pre-colonisation is demonstrably false, just consider the eel farms and factories in Victoria
- defrost 3y agoI wonder if they read the paper either, it talks of many things, diet, work levels, nutritional levels, etc. It does include the extract: It is the accepted view that huntergatherers in general and Australian Aborigines in particular were neither undernourished nor overworked. But it is necessary to know more of the balance between work expenditure and nourishment, and the particular qualities of the diet that may have some bearing on fertility. (Robson, 1975:51)
- jojobas 3y agoHow do you think living in balance with the environment looks? It's essentially food equilibrium, as everywhere else in nature. Dry year = death. Also they were eel traps, not farms or factories, were only available to a miniscule fraction of the tribes and they still were in equilibrium with eel supply. Agricultural Revolution is not called revolution for nothing, that's basically when human population started growing after millennia of stability caused by equilibrium with food supply (aka hunger).
- h0l0cube 3y agoIt's amazing how you went from 'there was no agricultural revolution in Australia' to 'Aboriginal Australians never figured how seeds work, or the link between pregnancy and sex'. I've witnessed firsthand from many – of course, not all – Australians that they are motivated to believe that indigenous Australians are mentally deficient as a way to paper over past atrocities and to justify the degradation and exclusion of them from society. You might want to give 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' a read, which provides a different and more compelling hypothesis to 'eurasian man smarter' for the beginning of the agricultural revolution.